My Potato Soup

Potato Soup

So this past week I have made potato soup twice. It’s not something new, it’s just something I make semi-well. And I love potatoes. And soup. So obviously I eat this a lot. And I thought I would take a picture and post my “recipe” (I use that term loosely since I have things in my head and have never measured) for posterity. Also there’s a million feet of snow on the ground here in Flagstaff and supposedly another foot coming today or something. So I am avoiding going out into the world. Although I just noticed that my coffee is running low and that would be enough to drive me absolutely MAD so I may have to venture out anyway. I wonder if ANY place in Flagstaff is open today? ANYWAY…

Erin’s Potato Soup recipe
(this recipe makes A LOT of soup because I usually make it and take it for my lunch for a week or so)
Potatoes (as many as you feel like you need)
carrots (I usually chop up about 2-3 of them)
onions (1 big one, usually)
garlic (usually 2 of the cloves)
1 quart of milk
water (1-2 cups)
salt (to taste)
black pepper (about 2-3 shakes of my pepper shaker usually does it)
white pepper (I usually use a lot because I make this soup super hot)
oatmeal (2-3 cups)

1. Cut the potatoes and carrots into soup appropriate chunks. Place in a pot on the stove in water (with a little salt) and boil until you can stick a fork into them with relative ease. Drain off about 90% of the water and leave the rest in the soup pot.
2. Add the milk to the soup. Chop up the onions and garlic into soup appropriate pieces. Add to the pot.
3. Add the salt, black pepper and white pepper and the extra water.
4. Let the soup heat up and mix well and be all soupy for about 7-10 min (or whatever length of time you deem appropriate).
5. Add the oatmeal. When you add the oatmeal you have to stay close to the kitchen and stir the soup periodically so the oatmeal doesn’t stick and burn to the bottom (which ruins the taste of the soup).
6. At some point this will all look “done” and then you can eat it. Usually it’s when the oatmeal is plumping up and everything looks really lovely and thick.

Some notes on why I do what I do:
–How do I know how much of the salt/black pepper/white pepper to put in? I do frequent spoon tests till I get it the way I want it.
–Why do I use oatmeal? I use oatmeal because I really like a nice thick soup and I was trying to decide how to make my soup thicker in the most healthy way possible and that’s what I came up with. The best part about using oatmeal is that the next day the soup has congealed into a tasty kind of potato oatmeal. Yum yum.